A day after finishing with a valuation above Amazon.com Inc., Nvidia Corp. is now on track to leave Alphabet Inc. behind as well.
The chip maker’s stock
NVDA,
was up 2.3% in Wednesday morning trading and on pace to close with a $1.82 trillion market value. Alphabet’s stock
GOOG,
GOOGL,
was only up 0.2% in morning action and on track to finish with a $1.81 trillion valuation.
The intraday action makes Nvidia the third-largest U.S. company by market capitalization, behind Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
($3.02 trillion) and Apple Inc.
AAPL,
($2.84 trillion).
When Nvidia closed with a higher valuation than Amazon
AMZN,
in Tuesday’s session, it achieved that milestone for the first time since April 18, 2002, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
See also: Jeff Bezos unloads another $2 billion of Amazon stock. He’s sold $4 billion this month.
If Nvidia were to finish the trading day ahead of Alphabet, however, it would be notching that feat for the first time in its history.
The chip maker was the seventh-largest company by market cap both a year and two years ago, and it was the 12th largest three years ago. Four years back, Nvidia sat outside the top 20.
Nvidia’s dramatic climb up the ranks of the largest U.S. businesses comes as the company is seeing blockbuster demand for its graphics-processing units that are used to power the artificial-intelligence boom. The stock is up 222% over a 12-month span.
Shares of Nvidia experienced only a fractional decline Tuesday on a tough day for the broad market, which illustrated to Mizuho desk-based analyst Jordan Klein that the theme of AI capital expenditures and buildouts is “alive and well” and contributing to FOMO — fear of missing out — in “parts of the market.”
That dynamic makes Nvidia’s Feb. 21 earnings report all the more intriguing.
